Hi all, please forgive the video quality - zoom was struggling on the day. Please be kind, I'm no George Clooney :) Seriously though, please do take the time to comment as there's nothing like a good debate :) Hope you enjoy the interview!
I'm Irish. I well remember the LONG wait for the Electron. It did become the 3rd highest selling 8-bit micro in the UK for a period. Thank you for an excellent discussion. Very professionally done.
Great interview and video. Love hearing the stories about Acorn from the people who were there. Being based in Cambridge and hearing comments like "I had just completed my second degree" does give an indication just how smart the engineers were.
Absolutely - these guys were so ahead of their time it's just really humbling to be in their (virtual) presence. Paul was a great interviewee and I can't thank him enough for his time.
The Achilles heal of the 8-bit Acorn machines before the advent of the BBC B+ and Master was the lack of memory, so it was interesting to hear Paul Fellows speculate about putting 64k of RAM in the Electron at launch. Building the Electron around eight instead of four of the 1x64kbit DRAM chips of the day would have solved the performance issues caused by the 4-bit wide data bus to RAM. This one change would have given Acorn a machine with more memory than the Spectrum 48k, and enabled the 2MHz 6502 to run at twice the speed of the Commodore 64's 6510 over the whole of the memory map.
Commodore still had the ultimate edge, in that they owned the 6502 and could customize it more readily, to fit the available memory chips or any other manufacturing concerns that might have come up.
Other ex-Acorn people have said that it was the B+ had to be made because of the model B's 16kbit DRAM availability. The Electron apparently had the 4 x 64 kbit DRAMs to reduce component count. (I would guess getting the ULA to produce RAS/CAS timings would be difficult at 4 MHz.) Sphinx Adventure was one of my first, if not the first, game I had for the Electron. Electron User eventually published the full solution. I still had no idea how you were supposed to find the path through the desert.
Acorn’s loss was my gain as Christmas 1985 Dixon’s were bundling the electron with a cassette player and 5 games (Sphinx Adventure included) all for £99. At that price, still an expensive present, my parents could afford a computer that I was pestering them for. Considering the severe limitations it was a fantastic machine, BBC basic, built in assembler, hi res graphics, full colour and no clash. The spectrum may have had over 10,000 games but we were blessed with Exile and Citadel, I was playing Moon Raider recently and it’s pretty much arcade quality(scramble). Thanks for a great interview and I’m yet still to complete the Sphinx Adventure!
The Beeb is such an awesome machine! So versatile and well thought through. Really ahead of its time in 1981. I used them at school in the eighties like most of us. It's one of my very favourites to this day next to Commodore's big machines (Pet, C64, Amiga) and the IBM PC 👍
Sphinx Adventure was one of the first games I got for my BBC B. It all got a bit emotional there at the end of the interview :D Great memories, thanks!
I’m surprised nobody has written an authoritative history of Acorn. I worked in software in Cambridge for over a decade and it’s no exaggeration that you’re never very far from Acorn’s influence. For example, Paul mentioning Tim Dobson reminded me that I haven’t seen Tim for a long time and used to bump into him quite often. I know (and at various times, hired) dozens of ex-Acorn people and many of them are absolutely stunning engineers. No CV with “Acorn” mentioned on it ever went in the bin while I was hiring! In fact my first software job was for an ex-Acorn engineer’s startup so I started off my career in the orbit of that whole miasma of great engineering knowledge. Oddly enough, my path has never directly crossed with Paul’s. At one point he hired one of my ex-hires (another fantastic ex-Acorn engineer), and I’m sure I’ve been at the same social events once or twice but we never actually met. A book detailing how everything and everyone at Acorn fitted together both at the time and since would be absolutely fascinating (and would name at least fifty of my friends!).
I embarked on exactly such a project back in 2006 and made a good start on it. Unfortunately I was very badly let down over the funding that I’d been promised and was left in a position whereby it was impossible to continue. However, time moves on and circumstances change. The idea has been in my mind for two decades, now, and I’d still like to do it; I think I could make a good job of it. So, whilst I’m not announcing anything here, it’s fair to say that I haven’t abandoned the idea, and maybe finding another way forward is becoming less unrealistic. I certainly haven’t given up on the idea, and if I can manage to revive it, I will.
I had an Electron back in the 80s and it was a fantastic wee computer. I got mine when they were discounted down to £175 (if memory serves) and I maintain that it had the best keyboard I have ever used. Obviously the biggest problem the Electron had was that it was late to market but there were three other issues as well. 1) It should have been designed to have 64K RAM as standard. 2) It needed MODE 7. 3) It needed to access RAM and ROM at 2MHz. One can only surmise that Acorn did this to reduce the impact on BBC Micro sales but I think they got that wrong as the customers for each machine were different.
@@TheRetroShack Mind you, the Electron was too little too late. I moved from the Electron to an Amstrad CPC664 and it left the Electron for dead. The CPC was a very probably the ultimate 8 bit system with an amazing blend of hardware, games and professional (CP/M) software at an awesome price. It was clear though that the golden age of 8 bit was coming to an end. I was fortune to work for a computer retailer at the time and had access to almost everything... MSX, ST, Amiga, PC etc. Despite everything though, I raise my glass to Sir Clive Sinclair and the folks at Sinclair Research. Without the ZX81 (my first computer) I would not have enjoyed a life long career in IT. Sinclair and his cheap computers probably did more for the UK tech industry than anything else.
@@paddycoleman1472 Absolutely! Keep an eye out on the Shack’s Twitter account for glimpses of what’s coming up (Hint... it came out in 1981...) Thanks for watching!
I still have my Electron, and yes the keyboard is very nice. And yes the 64 k would be nice. Mode 7? I never missed that teletext mode, I would rather have 16 colours instead of those blinking things. Agree about the RAM speed, it was a bottleneck. Another thing is sound. The soundchip that the BBC was using was not expensive, but makes some difference. The Electron was my first machine and I love it and after that I bought an MSX (I have 3 MSX 1 computers and 1 MSX 2) I never had a CPC, but several others (C64, Atari 130XE and Sharp MZ800) after that the ST/Amiga. I still have those except for the Sharp.
Fascinating. Thank you both. I got my first job programming thanks to what I’d learnt at home on my BBC model B. It was £400 and more than my parents could really afford at the time, so I reluctantly asked for a ZX Spectrum for Xmas at less than half the cost. Thankfully they asked me what the point of getting one of those was as it looked like all it was good for was gaming, so I got my hearts desire anyway 😉
I loved the start up BONG, flute sound of Arthur - does anyone have it ?? More importantly - I woke at 4am this morning and have watched nearly all the videos by 07:30 - OK I did dose a bit. Brilliant ! I was a solid Acorn man, I saw an alternative for the first ever BBC Micro - the 'New Brain' - it was not chosen :-) I was really impressed by it, but, what we got was far better. I worked at TV Centre, VT Shift One, Shift Two went 8080, Shift One was 6502. I wrote for Archive, Arc World and Acorn User for years and exhibited software... Ho hum. Great to see the Beeb is back - looking forward to the RPi linkup. Too much to say !
So glad you’re enjoying the series. I almost grabbed a Newbrain the other week but it drifted out of my grasp :( Got the Archimedes series to look forward to though :)
I worked for a computer shop in the 1980's and the Electron was Too little, too late. It should have been 8x 64kb and not 32kb (accessed by 4bit at the time ) and the plus1 was an extra and should have been built in from the start. Acorn should have been handing out developer samples to anyone who had a library to convert. Commodore had one HUGE advantage which was that it had it's own fabrication labs, making CPU's peripheral chips (SID, PLA TED etc)
Interesting interview. A few comparisons are not quite right, e.g. PowerPC was not around at the time the first ARM boards were made, and there were no million gates CPUs in 1985. ARM achievements, especially its size and power requirements were very impressive and still are in perspective.
Really interesting video, thank you both. Do new memory expansion cards like the ElkSD64 just add memory, or do they also improve the way in which that memory is accessed?
@@TheRetroShack Oh, agreed 100%. My first computer was an Electron, circa 1989 - which is late, but Electron User was still in print and budget software was still in shops so I was happy. I also wrote an emulator later on. Hearing these stories with first-hand analysis is great!
Although I was in the Sinclair camp back in the day, I found this to be fantastic interview and really interesting. The story of the Arm processor keeping going on just the run down of a fan was remarkable goes to show how efficient it is. I think it was a shame all Acorn machines until the B+ were crippled with just 32k ram. I do have a master 128 in my collection but don’t use any of my machines much nowadays having moved to another hobby. I know before powering this machine up again I have a couple of rifa caps to swap out or it could go up in a puff of smoke.
The first time I powered up this Beeb (Way before the refurb) was because Mrs RetroShack had a dream about ‘how many pages would a book need to have for all its page numbers to add up to 8,000,000’... (Not kidding) and the only computer I had to hand at that time was the Beeb - so I powered it up and knocked up a program in basic to work it out (the answer was 4000 I think.) and it ram the program fine, presented the answer and then five seconds later went ‘bang!’and the white smoke flowed... :)
@@TheRetroShack Oh yes that’ll be a refa, not had one go on me but have seen a couple of videos were people have. Apparently it’s a bit stinky as well. The two in my machine are cracking on the surface.
I find it interesting that the Electron is often thought as a failure considering it was commercially supported into the 1990s. I suppose it's all relative based on the expectations of the machine?
I suppose it's all relative. It simply didn't sell as well as Acorn had hoped. And especially when compared to the Spectrum, C64 etc. Personally, I think it got short shrift!
@@TheRetroShack I owned an Electron at the time and 'upgraded' to a CPC 6128, which gave me access to a lot more mainstream games, but looking back I missed out on some impressive Superior software games in the later days of the Elk. And Electron User magazine was superb!
@@TheRetroShack Locomotive Basic on the CPC was actually good, but BBC BASIC is definitely king! I went back coding on the Elk in the early 90s and still use it today!
Wow the acorn Electron I absolutely love this machine remember walking the whole length of Edgware Road to buy the joystick interface😎😂 it didn't look that long on the A to Z.
Keep an eye on eBay - they do come up now and again. Also, keep an eye out for the next episode in the Electron series as that may be of interest to you :)
If Mode 7 and the RAM had been the same as the Beeb, I think it would have been a huge success. (It was a success IMO but would have done a lot better). Basically they should have made a Beeb compatible board without all of the ports etc.
@@TheRetroShack LOL. :) Well mode 7 would have added 100% compatibility as most games used the extra RAM available in that mode (I believe) as the beeb had 31k available as contrasted to the Elk's 24K
My first computer was an Electron and a £250 64kb Electron running at the same speed as the BBC would have been a winner (even better if had a 16 colour RGBI palette). They could have had two product ranges cheaper home computers with fairly minimal ports and expensive BBCs with every port you could imagine for schools / universities. Wonder how much money was wasted trying to make these business computers that could have been better invested in home computers.
Great interview. I love hearing from the UK home computer goldenish age insiders.. Fascinating. Needed Sinclair's technological drive, Amstrad's mass market sensibilities and Acorns software and tech. know-how rolled into one, government contracted, range of COMPATIBLE computers for home/games, education and business markets for the UK to have had a hope of ruling the e-waves.. -- Instead of such complex ULAs, a bet-hedging, software-developer enticing TRIPLE CORE system with Z80H as an 8mhz speccy compatible upgrade, 6502 for BBC compatibility + i/o handling, 68008 as a 32 bit coprocessor or main CPU. 1 fairly simple ULA for extra IO and Graphics plus a DMA system with slightly faster memory than the QL... The SINCLAIR Spectrum QL bundled with AcornOS + AcornBASIC, Psion Office, games. Sinclair had the biggest international name. -- 128kb including or plus 64kb video memory, optional matching double microdrive, single disk drive, tape deck, 'wafer storage!' addon.. £219.99, £249.99 with matching tape deck... Released in 1984 as early as possible. -- Acorn would have ended up buying out Sinclair and Amstrad after their ARM CPUs took off.
Given it was the Thatcher years, I'm genuinely shocked the entire computer literacy project was actually seen out given it was government subsidised. All three of the main companies working together would have been the way forward but unfortunately the times made it so that couldn't happen.
@@medes5597 .. I really don't get why people think Conservatives were ever conservative, spending-(un)wise... They've borrowed many times more than Lie-bore, paid back half as much (a miniscule drop in both cases compared to national debt).. Since Blair Lie-bore have privatised more than the Tories, who have actually Nationalised some companies... Thatcher was a raving Liberal who heavily pushed to remain in the EU (EC) despite Old Labour making all the Leave arguments made by Farage and Co. 30+ years later... Thatcher very much believed in mass forced sales schemes and funnelling public money to the private sector, while pushing the Trick-All-Down Effect, like New Labour, the Tories' bastard child..!
@@medes5597 .. Also, what do you mean by 'the times made it so' companies couldn't merge and take each other over? I suppose it was a GOOD time for independent, small time home computer makers but IBM compatible was already a thing (a defacto standard) and there were many multi-company standards, with MSX being a good example (though MS led).. -- Acorn had a multi-processor bus and standard interface so there was the opportunity for a British multi-company standard for coprocessors and peripherals. It would have been the only way to compete with IBM and MS to a lesser extent in the long run, but times were GOOD so quite a few companies competed, which was GOOD for customers.. Sinclair, Acorn, Amstrad + MANY smaller companies... GOOD TIMES! ARM became Arm and still dominates many markets and sets many standards, even if it is not really British any more. Still mainly Britain-based at least.
@@PrivateSi you're right they could have done all that on their own, but the reason we had a micro computer boom was because of the big push for computer literacy, not just at schools but in job retraining, across various industries, etc. And the government was very particular about the BBC licensing an existing machine, not having one made for them (althogh that is what happened but it wasn't intended to happen). Previously for similar projects the government had brought multiple companies together and forced them to work as one in order to create a single standardised tool that would be the tool used for that project. They did it with BT phone line equipment, they did it with mining equipment and with various power industry things. Basically your idea of "the best of acorn/sinclair/amstrad produce one machine" give or take. However the change of philosophy about government interference in business meant they weren't going to do that (which also meant things like the One Per Desk project got screwed over, the UK version of Frances minitel never really got off the ground, etc) and were going to let the market decide by licensing an existing design and seeing what emerged in competition. Now personally speaking I don't w I why the combined approach with each company having their own machines as well couldn't have worked. Surely if you want a standard computer for education and other purposes, having all the companies agree to and contribute to that standard machine is the best idea. Then they can break away and have their own machines that could be compatabile with that standard but do more in other areas. That's what I meant. It was an atmosphere where an obsession with liberatian business values took over and it ended with everyone from sinclair to dragon to thousands of software houses going bankrupt and the UK micro scene having no direct legacy. We never had a UK Amiga or ST because there was no one to make it for consumers and acorn had a high end business and commercial clientele with the archimedes around then.
@@TheRetroShack I've bought cars for less lol it actually gets worse st blitter chips are rarer than hens teeth in 10 years I've never seen one anywhere someone just put 3 on eBay had to buy one lol
Hi all, please forgive the video quality - zoom was struggling on the day. Please be kind, I'm no George Clooney :) Seriously though, please do take the time to comment as there's nothing like a good debate :) Hope you enjoy the interview!
I'm Irish. I well remember the LONG wait for the Electron. It did become the 3rd highest selling 8-bit micro in the UK for a period. Thank you for an excellent discussion. Very professionally done.
Thanks very much :)
Great interview and video. Love hearing the stories about Acorn from the people who were there. Being based in Cambridge and hearing comments like "I had just completed my second degree" does give an indication just how smart the engineers were.
Absolutely - these guys were so ahead of their time it's just really humbling to be in their (virtual) presence. Paul was a great interviewee and I can't thank him enough for his time.
Loved my Acorn Electron and it had some great arcade ports, I listed lot on my Facebook page/Group, Electron Forever 🙏
What's not to love? They're great little machines :)
The Achilles heal of the 8-bit Acorn machines before the advent of the BBC B+ and Master was the lack of memory, so it was interesting to hear Paul Fellows speculate about putting 64k of RAM in the Electron at launch. Building the Electron around eight instead of four of the 1x64kbit DRAM chips of the day would have solved the performance issues caused by the 4-bit wide data bus to RAM. This one change would have given Acorn a machine with more memory than the Spectrum 48k, and enabled the 2MHz 6502 to run at twice the speed of the Commodore 64's 6510 over the whole of the memory map.
Interesting to speculate :) What a shame Acorn didn’t go for it :)
Commodore still had the ultimate edge, in that they owned the 6502 and could customize it more readily, to fit the available memory chips or any other manufacturing concerns that might have come up.
Other ex-Acorn people have said that it was the B+ had to be made because of the model B's 16kbit DRAM availability. The Electron apparently had the 4 x 64 kbit DRAMs to reduce component count.
(I would guess getting the ULA to produce RAS/CAS timings would be difficult at 4 MHz.)
Sphinx Adventure was one of my first, if not the first, game I had for the Electron. Electron User eventually published the full solution. I still had no idea how you were supposed to find the path through the desert.
That's it... I'm going to play it through tomorrow for the last time - and finish it!
I will always have a special place in my heart for Acorn and Acornsoft. Thanks for that, really good.
Glad you enjoyed it
Acorn’s loss was my gain as Christmas 1985 Dixon’s were bundling the electron with a cassette player and 5 games (Sphinx Adventure included) all for £99. At that price, still an expensive present, my parents could afford a computer that I was pestering them for.
Considering the severe limitations it was a fantastic machine, BBC basic, built in assembler, hi res graphics, full colour and no clash. The spectrum may have had over 10,000 games but we were blessed with Exile and Citadel, I was playing Moon Raider recently and it’s pretty much arcade quality(scramble).
Thanks for a great interview and I’m yet still to complete the Sphinx Adventure!
You and me both my friend!!!! In fact, I'm feeling like I may just have a play this evening! :)
Absolutely fascinating to hear from someone in the trenches at the time. Thank you for putting this interview together!
Glad you enjoyed it!
The Beeb is such an awesome machine! So versatile and well thought through. Really ahead of its time in 1981. I used them at school in the eighties like most of us. It's one of my very favourites to this day next to Commodore's big machines (Pet, C64, Amiga) and the IBM PC 👍
Me too! Our recently refurbished Model B is now my daily driver for episode writing :)
Thanks for the interview - very interesting to hear from people who were at Acorn all those years ago.
You’re welcome - it’s an amazing time in computing history to be sure :)
Sphinx Adventure was one of the first games I got for my BBC B. It all got a bit emotional there at the end of the interview :D Great memories, thanks!
Awwww :) Glad you enjoyed the interview - it was quite special :) :)
The man who wrote Sphinx Adventure? An all time favourite of mine on my Electron in 1986.
Was fascinating to hear this interview.
Thanks and glad you enjoyed it :)
I’m surprised nobody has written an authoritative history of Acorn. I worked in software in Cambridge for over a decade and it’s no exaggeration that you’re never very far from Acorn’s influence.
For example, Paul mentioning Tim Dobson reminded me that I haven’t seen Tim for a long time and used to bump into him quite often. I know (and at various times, hired) dozens of ex-Acorn people and many of them are absolutely stunning engineers. No CV with “Acorn” mentioned on it ever went in the bin while I was hiring! In fact my first software job was for an ex-Acorn engineer’s startup so I started off my career in the orbit of that whole miasma of great engineering knowledge.
Oddly enough, my path has never directly crossed with Paul’s. At one point he hired one of my ex-hires (another fantastic ex-Acorn engineer), and I’m sure I’ve been at the same social events once or twice but we never actually met.
A book detailing how everything and everyone at Acorn fitted together both at the time and since would be absolutely fascinating (and would name at least fifty of my friends!).
Absolutely! The infiltration of Acorn technology into almost every aspect of society is little known and very surprising! Thanks for sharing!
I embarked on exactly such a project back in 2006 and made a good start on it. Unfortunately I was very badly let down over the funding that I’d been promised and was left in a position whereby it was impossible to continue. However, time moves on and circumstances change. The idea has been in my mind for two decades, now, and I’d still like to do it; I think I could make a good job of it. So, whilst I’m not announcing anything here, it’s fair to say that I haven’t abandoned the idea, and maybe finding another way forward is becoming less unrealistic. I certainly haven’t given up on the idea, and if I can manage to revive it, I will.
@@RichardHallas Well I for one wish you the very best of luck!
Fascinating. I hope this leads to many more, well deserved, followers.
Thank you kindly!
I had an Electron back in the 80s and it was a fantastic wee computer. I got mine when they were discounted down to £175 (if memory serves) and I maintain that it had the best keyboard I have ever used. Obviously the biggest problem the Electron had was that it was late to market but there were three other issues as well. 1) It should have been designed to have 64K RAM as standard. 2) It needed MODE 7. 3) It needed to access RAM and ROM at 2MHz. One can only surmise that Acorn did this to reduce the impact on BBC Micro sales but I think they got that wrong as the customers for each machine were different.
Totally agree about the keyboard!!!
@@TheRetroShack Mind you, the Electron was too little too late. I moved from the Electron to an Amstrad CPC664 and it left the Electron for dead. The CPC was a very probably the ultimate 8 bit system with an amazing blend of hardware, games and professional (CP/M) software at an awesome price. It was clear though that the golden age of 8 bit was coming to an end. I was fortune to work for a computer retailer at the time and had access to almost everything... MSX, ST, Amiga, PC etc. Despite everything though, I raise my glass to Sir Clive Sinclair and the folks at Sinclair Research. Without the ZX81 (my first computer) I would not have enjoyed a life long career in IT. Sinclair and his cheap computers probably did more for the UK tech industry than anything else.
@@paddycoleman1472 Absolutely! Keep an eye out on the Shack’s Twitter account for glimpses of what’s coming up (Hint... it came out in 1981...) Thanks for watching!
I still have my Electron, and yes the keyboard is very nice. And yes the 64 k would be nice. Mode 7? I never missed that teletext mode, I would rather have 16 colours instead of those blinking things. Agree about the RAM speed, it was a bottleneck. Another thing is sound. The soundchip that the BBC was using was not expensive, but makes some difference. The Electron was my first machine and I love it and after that I bought an MSX (I have 3 MSX 1 computers and 1 MSX 2) I never had a CPC, but several others (C64, Atari 130XE and Sharp MZ800) after that the ST/Amiga. I still have those except for the Sharp.
@@xXTheoLinuxXx Nice collection there Theo!
Fascinating. Thank you both. I got my first job programming thanks to what I’d learnt at home on my BBC model B.
It was £400 and more than my parents could really afford at the time, so I reluctantly asked for a ZX Spectrum for Xmas at less than half the cost. Thankfully they asked me what the point of getting one of those was as it looked like all it was good for was gaming, so I got my hearts desire anyway 😉
Fascinating insight - thank you from a teenager of the 80s!
You're very welcome - glad you enjoyed it ;)
I loved the start up BONG, flute sound of Arthur - does anyone have it ??
More importantly - I woke at 4am this morning and have watched nearly all the videos by 07:30 - OK I did dose a bit. Brilliant ! I was a solid Acorn man, I saw an alternative for the first ever BBC Micro - the 'New Brain' - it was not chosen :-) I was really impressed by it, but, what we got was far better. I worked at TV Centre, VT Shift One, Shift Two went 8080, Shift One was 6502. I wrote for Archive, Arc World and Acorn User for years and exhibited software... Ho hum. Great to see the Beeb is back - looking forward to the RPi linkup. Too much to say !
So glad you’re enjoying the series. I almost grabbed a Newbrain the other week but it drifted out of my grasp :( Got the Archimedes series to look forward to though :)
Only just got round to watching your Acorn series. Fantastic videos and this was a fascinating interview. Keep up the great work :)
That's incredibly kind - thank you, and glad you enjoyed them.
Fascinating interview btw, thanks for uploading!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I worked for a computer shop in the 1980's and the Electron was Too little, too late. It should have been 8x 64kb and not 32kb (accessed by 4bit at the time ) and the plus1 was an extra and should have been built in from the start. Acorn should have been handing out developer samples to anyone who had a library to convert. Commodore had one HUGE advantage which was that it had it's own fabrication labs, making CPU's peripheral chips (SID, PLA TED etc)
Thanks for watching - and yes, it was just too little, too late - shame :(
Interesting interview. A few comparisons are not quite right, e.g. PowerPC was not around at the time the first ARM boards were made, and there were no million gates CPUs in 1985. ARM achievements, especially its size and power requirements were very impressive and still are in perspective.
Really interesting video, thank you both.
Do new memory expansion cards like the ElkSD64 just add memory, or do they also improve the way in which that memory is accessed?
Thanks very much - The next episode on the Elk will cover the Elk64SD so keep watching ;)
@@TheRetroShack No spoilers but it's not usable RAM in the typical sense of the word! Watch the latest video by TRS ;)
"It was so far ahead of the PowerPC" - eight years ahead, in fact.
:) It was SUCH an interesting interview - Paul was great!
@@TheRetroShack Oh, agreed 100%. My first computer was an Electron, circa 1989 - which is late, but Electron User was still in print and budget software was still in shops so I was happy. I also wrote an emulator later on. Hearing these stories with first-hand analysis is great!
Although I was in the Sinclair camp back in the day, I found this to be fantastic interview and really interesting. The story of the Arm processor keeping going on just the run down of a fan was remarkable goes to show how efficient it is. I think it was a shame all Acorn machines until the B+ were crippled with just 32k ram. I do have a master 128 in my collection but don’t use any of my machines much nowadays having moved to another hobby. I know before powering this machine up again I have a couple of rifa caps to swap out or it could go up in a puff of smoke.
The first time I powered up this Beeb (Way before the refurb) was because Mrs RetroShack had a dream about ‘how many pages would a book need to have for all its page numbers to add up to 8,000,000’... (Not kidding) and the only computer I had to hand at that time was the Beeb - so I powered it up and knocked up a program in basic to work it out (the answer was 4000 I think.) and it ram the program fine, presented the answer and then five seconds later went ‘bang!’and the white smoke flowed... :)
@@TheRetroShack Oh yes that’ll be a refa, not had one go on me but have seen a couple of videos were people have. Apparently it’s a bit stinky as well. The two in my machine are cracking on the surface.
@@RobA500 It did pong a bit! :)
What a brilliant interview. :)
Thanks - Paul was a pleasure to interview!
I find it interesting that the Electron is often thought as a failure considering it was commercially supported into the 1990s. I suppose it's all relative based on the expectations of the machine?
I suppose it's all relative. It simply didn't sell as well as Acorn had hoped. And especially when compared to the Spectrum, C64 etc. Personally, I think it got short shrift!
@@TheRetroShack I owned an Electron at the time and 'upgraded' to a CPC 6128, which gave me access to a lot more mainstream games, but looking back I missed out on some impressive Superior software games in the later days of the Elk. And Electron User magazine was superb!
@@tonykingsmill2310 And BBC Basic was/is by far the best on the 8 bit machines (in my opinion at least :) )
@@TheRetroShack Locomotive Basic on the CPC was actually good, but BBC BASIC is definitely king! I went back coding on the Elk in the early 90s and still use it today!
Wow the acorn Electron I absolutely love this machine remember walking the whole length of Edgware Road to buy the joystick interface😎😂 it didn't look that long on the A to Z.
Refurb coming VERY soon :) :)
I have got Pascal for the Acorn electron and I am looking for COMAL and FORTH cartridges.
Keep an eye on eBay - they do come up now and again. Also, keep an eye out for the next episode in the Electron series as that may be of interest to you :)
Sounds like someone needs an ELKSd64, a blank SDcard, and some rom images.
@@AndrewRoberts11 Probably, but I'd like the original too. I want COMAL and FORTH as well.
A very interesting interview!
Thanks! Yes, I was very honoured to have Paul on the channel and it was fascinating :)
Great interview, very interesting
Thanks very much - Paul was great and such an interesting career!
I'm desperate to fix that shelf...
Mine, or Paul’s? :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Definitely Paul's. Yours can get away with anything as I'm admiring the Monkey Island poster 🐒.
That was great, v informative.
Thanks - glad you enjoyed it :)
Where can I get one of those silver spectrums?
Here you go: th-cam.com/video/VFLJLxDTEkQ/w-d-xo.html
@@TheRetroShack Epic tyvm 😀
If Mode 7 and the RAM had been the same as the Beeb, I think it would have been a huge success. (It was a success IMO but would have done a lot better). Basically they should have made a Beeb compatible board without all of the ports etc.
Ram speed definitely - Mode 7 if you wanted to book a holiday or get the cricket results :) :)
@@TheRetroShack LOL. :) Well mode 7 would have added 100% compatibility as most games used the extra RAM available in that mode (I believe) as the beeb had 31k available as contrasted to the Elk's 24K
My first computer was an Electron and a £250 64kb Electron running at the same speed as the BBC would have been a winner (even better if had a 16 colour RGBI palette). They could have had two product ranges cheaper home computers with fairly minimal ports and expensive BBCs with every port you could imagine for schools / universities.
Wonder how much money was wasted trying to make these business computers that could have been better invested in home computers.
Fun to speculate isn’t it :) :)
Great interview. I love hearing from the UK home computer goldenish age insiders.. Fascinating.
Needed Sinclair's technological drive, Amstrad's mass market sensibilities and Acorns software and tech. know-how rolled into one, government contracted, range of COMPATIBLE computers for home/games, education and business markets for the UK to have had a hope of ruling the e-waves..
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Instead of such complex ULAs, a bet-hedging, software-developer enticing TRIPLE CORE system with Z80H as an 8mhz speccy compatible upgrade, 6502 for BBC compatibility + i/o handling, 68008 as a 32 bit coprocessor or main CPU. 1 fairly simple ULA for extra IO and Graphics plus a DMA system with slightly faster memory than the QL... The SINCLAIR Spectrum QL bundled with AcornOS + AcornBASIC, Psion Office, games. Sinclair had the biggest international name.
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128kb including or plus 64kb video memory, optional matching double microdrive, single disk drive, tape deck, 'wafer storage!' addon.. £219.99, £249.99 with matching tape deck... Released in 1984 as early as possible.
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Acorn would have ended up buying out Sinclair and Amstrad after their ARM CPUs took off.
Thanks for investing the time to watch - it’s really fascinating stuff and Paul was great :)
Given it was the Thatcher years, I'm genuinely shocked the entire computer literacy project was actually seen out given it was government subsidised.
All three of the main companies working together would have been the way forward but unfortunately the times made it so that couldn't happen.
@@medes5597 .. I really don't get why people think Conservatives were ever conservative, spending-(un)wise... They've borrowed many times more than Lie-bore, paid back half as much (a miniscule drop in both cases compared to national debt).. Since Blair Lie-bore have privatised more than the Tories, who have actually Nationalised some companies... Thatcher was a raving Liberal who heavily pushed to remain in the EU (EC) despite Old Labour making all the Leave arguments made by Farage and Co. 30+ years later... Thatcher very much believed in mass forced sales schemes and funnelling public money to the private sector, while pushing the Trick-All-Down Effect, like New Labour, the Tories' bastard child..!
@@medes5597 .. Also, what do you mean by 'the times made it so' companies couldn't merge and take each other over? I suppose it was a GOOD time for independent, small time home computer makers but IBM compatible was already a thing (a defacto standard) and there were many multi-company standards, with MSX being a good example (though MS led)..
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Acorn had a multi-processor bus and standard interface so there was the opportunity for a British multi-company standard for coprocessors and peripherals. It would have been the only way to compete with IBM and MS to a lesser extent in the long run, but times were GOOD so quite a few companies competed, which was GOOD for customers.. Sinclair, Acorn, Amstrad + MANY smaller companies... GOOD TIMES! ARM became Arm and still dominates many markets and sets many standards, even if it is not really British any more. Still mainly Britain-based at least.
@@PrivateSi you're right they could have done all that on their own, but the reason we had a micro computer boom was because of the big push for computer literacy, not just at schools but in job retraining, across various industries, etc. And the government was very particular about the BBC licensing an existing machine, not having one made for them (althogh that is what happened but it wasn't intended to happen).
Previously for similar projects the government had brought multiple companies together and forced them to work as one in order to create a single standardised tool that would be the tool used for that project. They did it with BT phone line equipment, they did it with mining equipment and with various power industry things. Basically your idea of "the best of acorn/sinclair/amstrad produce one machine" give or take. However the change of philosophy about government interference in business meant they weren't going to do that (which also meant things like the One Per Desk project got screwed over, the UK version of Frances minitel never really got off the ground, etc) and were going to let the market decide by licensing an existing design and seeing what emerged in competition.
Now personally speaking I don't w I why the combined approach with each company having their own machines as well couldn't have worked. Surely if you want a standard computer for education and other purposes, having all the companies agree to and contribute to that standard machine is the best idea. Then they can break away and have their own machines that could be compatabile with that standard but do more in other areas.
That's what I meant. It was an atmosphere where an obsession with liberatian business values took over and it ended with everyone from sinclair to dragon to thousands of software houses going bankrupt and the UK micro scene having no direct legacy. We never had a UK Amiga or ST because there was no one to make it for consumers and acorn had a high end business and commercial clientele with the archimedes around then.
I've just gone and spent so much money on an Atari ST, a Spectrum and loads of accessories ITS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!!! I'm happy though lol
Oops! Sorry! :) Enjoy :) :)
@@TheRetroShack I've bought cars for less lol it actually gets worse st blitter chips are rarer than hens teeth in 10 years I've never seen one anywhere someone just put 3 on eBay had to buy one lol
@@bmdawe
rather enjoyed the headless chicken side story :-)
You and me both!